Minab Girls’ School Massacre: Hegseth’s “Maximum Lethality” Doctrine makes us all Unsafe

October 20, 2026
Alex Poppe
Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Back when I was an actor, I used to wait tables at the Divine Bar in Manhattan. We had a location right near the World Trade Center. One day after September 11, 2001, we had to evacuate the restaurant during lunch service. A human ear had been found on the building’s scaffolding.

One of Divine Bar’s doormen was also a New York City firefighter who lost 83 firefighter friends on 9/11. He told me how wives would come down to the firehouse wanting to know how their loved ones had died. If they had suffered. “How do I tell them the only thing holding their husband’s body together was his f%$#ing fireman suit?”
When the US military bombed the girls’ school in Minab, Iran on February 28, 2026, the first day of the war with Iran, first responders described the scene as “Body parts everywhere. Shredded children. Kids…pulverized against concrete. Body parts in trees.” How do you explain to a parent whose child was pulverized or shredded where their child is? That all that remains of their child is a school bag and shoes?
How did we arrive at a moment where this kind of explanation is necessary at all?
Leadership sets the tone. When President Trump returned to office in 2025, he rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, putting Pete Hegseth at the helm. Secretary Hegseth has made lethality his top priority, stating, “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality.” In turn, the White House praises “the most lethal military on Earth,” and the Heritage Foundation brags about “a military focused on lethality.” By prioritizing lethality, the Trump administration has reframed national security around increased aggression and decreased accountability, resulting in a disregard for civilian life.
In 2022, the Department of Defense set up the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) program, employing 200 people, 30 of whom were assigned to the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, a coordination hub located near the Pentagon. CHMR’s remit included thorough and detailed planning before an attack, real-time mapping of civilians in an area targeted for an attack, and a deep analysis of risks associated with a targeted attack. After an operation, there would be reports of civilian harm and investigations into what went wrong the aim to incorporate those findings into future trainings. Over the next few years, harm mitigation teams were placed within special operations leadership and regional commands.
Shortly after Secretary Hegseth became the Secretary of War, he dissolved the Civilian Protection Center at the Pentagon as part of  his maximum lethality policy and adoption of a the warrior ethos (Defense officials cannot formally close the Civilian Protection Center at the Pentagon without congressional approval. Instead, Secretary Hegseth’s actions have left the center with “no mission or mandate or budget.”).The Trump administration has also cut 90% of CHMR so that no more than one advisor is embedded at most commands.
According to Wes J. Bryant, an Air Force combat veteran and former CHMR senior advisor working out of the Civilian Protection Center at the Pentagon, since adopting the maximum lethality mandate, there is “zero accountability.” The US military has veered away from the rules and norms the global community established in the aftermath of World War II. The authorization level to use lethal force has been lowered, target categories have been broadened, threat assessment have been inflated, and inspector generals have been fired. On the first day of the war in Iran, the Pentagon boasted about hitting over 1000 targets.
Under the rules in the CHMR doctrine, the US military should have checked the most current satellite imagery of the target, in this case, the school in Minab, before launching a strike with this much lethality. Satellite imagery from a few weeks before the attack show the types of murals usually found at schools, a soccer field, and shadows of what look to be children playing outside.  It is true that until 2013, the area in Minab was an IRCG facility, but the school filed for registration in 2014 on land the IRCG donated, and the IRCG relocated their facilities two miles away. Nonetheless, schools are protected entities; students and civilians in the area are non-combatants, and therefore protected.
The publicly known IRCG base was not hit during the February 2026 strikes.
Instead, an area containing the girls’ school, a strip mall, a car wash, and a clinic were hit by at least two Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have cameras on them. According to Pentagon investigators, “flawed intelligence, outdated imagery, and an overreliance on AI” led to the missile strike on area full of civilians. Pentagon investigators have failed to connect this murder of over 156 people—what the United Nations has determined is a war crime—to a change in US military doctrine.
The Trump administration continues to insist that the attack on the school is Iranian propaganda, and that the IRCG bombed themselves. Evidence, such as photographs taken from under the rubble of the wreckage of Raytheon cruise missiles, contradicts the administration. Raytheon missiles are Tomahawks. Only five countries possess Tomahawk cruise missiles: The US, The UK, Australia, Japan and the Netherlands. Iran does not.
If President Trump and Secretary Hegseth want to increase national security, they need to own the strike on the school, investigate why it happened, rebuild CHMR, re-fund, re-equip, and re-empower the Civilian Protection Center at the Pentagon, and remove their maximum lethality mandate, which restricts operational awareness, cohesion, and overall performance and reduces the US military’s credibility.